


The price you pay

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he’d shown up while she was holed away hiding in an abandoned factory passing the time reading, he had appeared in those white scrubs with a handful of wildflowers. There were still clumps of dirt hanging off the bottom roots. He was smiling  at her like he used to when he thought he did something to earn a pudding cup. Meg scoffed at him. She couldn’t help it. Derision and contempt were natural reactions to anyone showing kindness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The price you pay

Meg curled closer to him, pressing against his side and draping over his chest, the two of them twined around each other under a tan trench coat. She told herself it was because of the chill through the broken window. Not like a little cold really bothered her, but demons were used to heat.

The wood floor of the bedroom was buckled up in uneven bumps, the plaster of the walls cracked and crumbling. Through the window she could see the near full moon high in a clear sky over the thick canopy of the forest. Castiel had winged her off to a few different places after they'd left the hospital and split up. He never staid away for too long, but no matter how much she griped that she was supposed to be hiding, Meg enjoyed his visits. This sort of place, oddly enough, she figured it was a kind of a compromise.

The first time he'd shown up while she was holed away hiding in an abandoned factory passing the time reading, he had appeared in those white scrubs with a handful of wildflowers. There were still clumps of dirt hanging off the bottom roots. He was smiling at her like he used to when he thought he did something to earn a pudding cup. Meg scoffed at him. She couldn't help it. Derision and contempt were natural reactions to anyone showing kindness.

It's not like he gave up. He took her to a beach to watch a sunset. To an actual Italian restaurant in Italy for dinner. To a tulip field. It's like he was trying out all the cliche set ups because he had no idea what he was doing. Having free run of the world again might be a little overwhelming.

Then he brought her here. An old abandoned house on the fringes of a deserted mountain town. The porch sloped, the first level windows were boarded, the shingles on the roof were curling and sloughing away. Everything was covered in vines, trees growing up against the side of the house encroaching from the forest. The inside was dirty, mildewed. Contents of dressers were scattered and the remains of lives past were faded and water damaged.

Somehow it felt right. And it was strange in it's own way, that this decay somehow made her feel comfortable. The wallpaper in the bedroom was a floral pattern, and there were purple flowers blooming on the vines that spread across the walls through the broken window. Kind of the sappy romantic feel he had been going for, but rotting and dirty.

Meg didn't know why he still sought her company, when he was free of the hospital and capable of at least base line functioning, he could go back to the Winchester boys, he could go any where. But he came to her, took her to the things he wanted her to see, told her quietly that he couldn't go back, that he didn't know where he was supposed to go. He had no cause. Meg could understand that. 

She didn't really know what to give him back, or why she wanted to. She didn't understand how to express something she couldn't comprehend herself, the shape of it in her mind was too foreign to wrap around. But she wanted him closer. She wanted to touch his vessel that expanded with breath and pulsed with blood under her hands. Wanted to see his wings unfurl and feel the dry electric burn of his Grace against her soul. She wanted things she couldn't name so she begged with her body and he took everything she had to offer, and gave whatever fragments of himself he had left.

His body shifted next to her. The coat slipped over his bare chest as an arm was raised to wrap around her shoulder. The cicadas were loud outside. His scrubs were folded on a chair in the corner. He could have changed, could have materialized anything he wanted. But he still wore them. And when his hand brushed down her side, she shifted her arm up, slipping her own into his, the scrape of plastic against her skin. He hadn't even torn off his hospital ID bracelet.

Meg was watching the breeze rustle a faded curtain when she twisted her fingers up in his, brushing against the bracelet.

"Why do you still wear this?"

She felt his neck and shoulders shift, felt a kiss pressed to the top of her head.

"So I don't forgot."

"Forget what?"

"The price of my mistakes, the consequences."

"Everyone makes mistakes. You shouldn't let it weigh you down."

"I betrayed those who trusted me, hurt the ones I care for the most."

"That's not really uncommon.”

“I don’t want to forget.”

“Why? You feel like you need to punish yourself, huh, feel like you deserve to suffer.”

“Yes.”

“That’s useless.”

“What I did to Sam, to my own brethren, it’s deplorable.”

“You can’t change it, you can’t do anything about it now.”

“I don’t want to make the same mistake again, I don’t want to forget.”

“I don’t think you will.”

His fingers were pushing through her hair, gently tugging out knots, curling around the contours of her skull. 

“You don’t?”

“No. You should stop punishing yourself for it. The world will punish you more than enough.”

His arms circled over her shoulders, she could hear the crinkle of the plastic bracelet as he shifted it over his wrist. 

“I don’t know what to do.”

“All you can do is to keep moving.”

“Where.”

“Anywhere but the past.”

“Will you go with me?”

She could tell herself she didn’t have anywhere better to be, that she was safer in numbers by his side, that his oddly easy acceptance of her was comfortable. The truth was, she did want to go anywhere with him, just for the sake of it, just to follow him. She understood consequences all too well, she had paid more than her fair share and then some, suffering for endless stretches in hell until she was twisted into what she was today.

It seemed strange, to take sinners and punish them until they became something far worse. Suffering had a way of creating change. Self imposed contrition was pointless, he would have his punishment ten fold at the hands of others.

Pressing tighter against his side, his hands fallen from fretting at the bracelet smoothed down her back, she listened to the heartbeat of his vessel. 

“Sure.”


End file.
